What would a trip to London be without at least one proper fancy afternoon tea? And our favorite place to go is definitely the Orangery in Kensington Palace. Of course, I say that like I have a ton of authority on British afternoon teas, which I definitely don’t. We’ve gone to a small handful of places, all fantastic, but there’s just something extra special about the Orangery. And since it was Cathy’s first trip to London, we wanted to share our favorite tea time spot!

It’s a little damp outside, but we’re still excited for a hot cup of tea and tiny bite sized treats!

#FancyChinaGoals

Teeny tiny tea appropriately sized finger sandwiches

And even better, the tiny sampling of sweets!

Mr. Andy drinking his proper cup of tea. But…why no pinky?

After our delightful afternoon tea, we wandered around and explored Kensington Palace. They had a fun collection of royal dresses, including some of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret’s dresses on display.

Sparkly!

I’m not exactly sure what it says about my style that I would totally wear something in this gorgeous rosebud print! But I think it’s beautiful!

How perfectly vintage and gorgeous!

I know many of you are thinking, “poor Andy, he must have been so bored!” Don’t worry friends, he always finds his own entertainment!

Andy as a well dressed lady in waiting? If the giant skirt fits, why not?

The day did turn out to be rather drizzly and cold. So, we spent a nice evening in our flat with a good tart English cider and watched the Great British Bake Off live on the television! It’s one of the many perks of renting a flat instead of staying at a hotel, you get a little more freedom to do/relax as you please. If/when we go back to London someday, we would definitely rent another flat! Maybe try a different part of town! **and already she’s dreaming of another trip to London**

Took a mini hiatus, but here I am, back again to tell you about one of our most favorite spots in all of London! Admittedly, Kew Gardens didn’t even make it on our list the last time we were in London. But Cathy insisted that we visit it this time around, and I’m so glad we did!

Kew Gardens are the Royal Botanic Gardens. For years and years, spanning multiple reigns of kings and queens of England, these gardens have collected interesting and beautiful species from all around the world! Their collections are enormous and it was so fun wandering around the vast grounds. Even better, we got there for an early morning walking tour with a garden guide. We learned so much about the history of the grounds and plenty of interesting facts about the collection itself. Okay, enough chatter, how about some pretty pictures?

This is a branch from a funky tree called a Monkey Puzzle tree. It’s spiky and downright bizarre looking. Love. <3

Here is Andy in front of the famous Palm House. Believe it or not, it was designed by borrowing techniques from the ship building industry at that time. So, I guess the fact that it looks like an upside down boat was done on purpose?

And how about some giant palms inside said Palm House? Here’s Andy pretending to be Totoro.

This one is for you Mom! The most beautiful water lilies in all shapes and colors!

Beautiful water lilies, GINORMOUS spiky water lily pads. You do NOT want to accidentally fall on one of those the wrong way…

Cathy and Andy in front of the Temperate House? I think? I really should take better notes…

And of course, the rose garden. We visited towards the end of the season, but the remaining roses were still gorgeous and so fragrant!

Or if you prefer red…

Andy and me posing in front of one of the many long tree lined walkways. Honestly, the weather was perfect! We could have spent the entire day just wandering around and soaking in all the wonderful sights!

We had a delicious lunch at the cafe and sadly said goodbye to Kew Gardens. But since we were on that side of town, we decided to make a quick stop at Hampton Court Palace…where we enjoyed more garden time. Oh well, if the weather really is that spectacular, why not take advantage of it?

The beautiful (and haunted) Hampton Court Palace, previous home of King Henry the VIII. Yes, THAT King Henry the VIII. The one with all the wives? Hence the haunting…also the reason why I took the picture from way over here.

We’re good at that relaxing thing!

Legless Angela. Not entirely sure why I decided to pose like this, but there you have it!

And then I found the dahlia garden. I spent a good amount of time trying to take pictures of these gorgeous flowers. Oh I love dahlias!

Dahlias as big as your head!!

Dahlias in every color! Though this one reminds me of a poisonous fish or as if it’s trying to warn me to stay away.

Cute little potted orange trees.

Cathy in front of the beautiful mess that can be an English garden.

And there you have it, our garden tour day! So much fun and I would so definitely do it again! But there are so many more gardens to visit! Oh a traveler’s work is never done…

Okay, for those that may not know it, we are huge fans of British television. We regularly watch Downton Abbey, Sherlock, Doctor Who, Nigella, Gardener’s World, the old Top Gear, Great British Bake-off, amongst many many other shows. But one of our absolute favorites is River Cottage. And every fall, River Cottage holds a huge autumn fair at their headquarters near Axminster. The autumn fair just happened to be the weekend we were in town! We saw this as a great opportunity to see more of England on a little day trip out of London. So, we hopped in our teeny tiny rental car and headed for Devon. It was a beautiful (though early) drive!

When we arrived at the fair, it was exactly what we had imagined it would be! The show is set on a very rural but beautiful farmhouse property. There were animals, gardens, a delicious bbq, local brews, activities, live music, and plenty of local vendors set up stands for us to wander around.

Andy introducing us to the River Cottage festival fields…

Hanging out in the festival fields, have you ever seen so much green? And though the weather was a little gray, it was actually a nice day out! Though being in the somewhat muddy fields did make me wish I had the quintessential British wellies in my wardrobe.

That way to see the cows…

Look at all those cabbages! Brassicas for us all!

The ever climbing sweet pea tunnel. Smelled so pretty!

And we even got to see a bird of prey show! The most massive bird was this giant vulture! Scary looking fella, but impressive nonetheless! Look at that wingspan!

After wandering around the fair, we took a look at the map to plot our course home. That’s when we discovered, we’re not too far from the coast! Why not take a quick detour to go see the beach?

Not the white sand beaches of Florida or Hawaii, but still absolutely gorgeous! Loved the cliffs and walking in the gravel! And see? Weather cleared up for a beautiful ocean picture!

It was a great day, even if we did do a lot of driving. However, we’re from Texas/Kansas. We’re used to a lot of driving to get anywhere interesting. The rest of our trip was completely London centered, so it was nice to take a day and get out to see the countryside. After all, there’s so much more to England than just London!

And there, I posted twice in the last two weeks and plan to continue blogging! Promise!

I know. It’s been a long time since I’ve updated my blog. In fact, it’s been so long that I actually forgot how to log into said blog. Well, no matter. Here I am getting ready to tell you about our trip last year to the UK. We had so much fun that I simply couldn’t neglect the opportunity to say a few (or a lot of) words about our awesome trip! So, here we go!

Why did we go to London again, didn’t we just go in 2011? Why yes! We sure did! Several reasons why we felt the need to re-visit the UK.

(and probably more importantly) We had theatre tickets to see Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch in Hamlet!! Thanks to our friends Gary and Adrian for helping us get these extremely sought after tickets!

Plus, it’s London!! We will never pass up the opportunity to explore London!

This time, instead of a crazy multi country trek from one end of the UK to the other, we decided to make London our home base and really take the time to explore one of our favorite cities. We rented a little flat in Kensington for our stay. This was really ideal because we each had our own space, a little kitchen for when we didn’t feel like going out to eat, and a common area to just hang and watch tv after a long day of sight seeing.

The back patio for our flat. It was a beautiful little area (when the weather cooperated). We liked to watch the neighborhood cats walking the fences throughout the day.

I actually think Andy was testing the camera during this shot. But it was the only other picture we took in the flat. So…here’s the living room where we spent many a late night taste testing delicious ciders and watching hilarious British television.

The first full day after we arrived in London (The actual first day doesn’t count. When you arrive in London at 7 am after an overnight flight, nothing makes sense and everything is a hazy nightmare), we decided to ease into sight seeing with a stroll down Portobello Road Market. Cue the song from Bedknobs and Broomsticks. So many fun things to look at and the weather was beautiful!

So many antiques to peruse!

I’m not sure what you do with old type, but it certainly looks cool!

Tiny bathtubs to hold your soap? Why not! Actually, I’m kind of kicking myself for not buying a tiny soap holding bathtub. I wish I had one now…

We stopped to get some food and check out the Tesco grocery store just down the block from our flat. So convenient! A nice nap may have been had before Andy and I got ready for our big Hamlet outing. Hey! Naps are important! Besides, when on vacation, you should be able to do as you please (within good reason, of course)!

So, we dug our jet lagged butts out of bed because we had a very important date with Gary and Adrian and Benedict Cumberbatch!

Our happy foursome at the Barbican Theatre spending a cultured evening watching Hamlet. (And seriously, five seconds after we snapped this photo THIS happened. Really truly.)

Though we didn’t get to actually take any non-photobombed photos of Mr. Cumberbatch, we were so amazingly close to the stage! It was a beautiful performance! And I don’t even like Hamlet that much!

Me and my Hamlet playbill.

A pretty good first night in London if you ask me! And I promise to come back to continue telling the tale of our London adventure. Really promise. 🙂

Hello blog reading friends! It’s been awhile, so let’s catch up shall we? So…we’ve done things. Lots of things in fact. For instance, we went on an Alaskan cruise this summer with my fam. Alaska was amazing! The scenery was awe-inspiring! The cruise? Well, it was cruise-like. I know a lot of people love them a nice relaxing cruise. My family…doesn’t. We definitely enjoyed our time together and we spent time wandering around each of the ports of call, but the actual cruising part of the vacay was a little too slow for us. Though, it should be said that the highlight of the trip could only be seen by ship, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

We started and ended our Alaskan adventure in Seattle. Oh Seattle, how we love thee! We did get a little time to wander around Pike’s Market when we returned, which was a lovely treat. But I digress, on with the cruise! The first full day on the ship was spent at sea. Andy and I attempted to take a yoga class at the ship’s gym. But we quickly discovered that yoga is much more difficult when your floor is constantly tipping from side to side as it gets rocked by waves. Also, it wasn’t a very challenging yoga class and was clearly being taught by a body building personal trainer that had been tricked/bribed into teaching an additional yoga class just so the ship could say they offered it. No matter, the stretch the class provided was still nice seeing as cruise ship rooms aren’t known for being terribly spacious. We did some cruise ship like things, ate WAY too much for our own good, and puttered around as only cruisers can. (Btw, the waves en route to Alaska are much rougher than in the Caribbean. I highly recommend bringing some formulation of Dramamine if you’re planning an Alaskan cruise. I got the natural Dramamine with ginger and it worked surprisingly well.)

I’m on a boat. (photo courtesy of Mommy Chao)

The next morning, we docked at our first stop, Ketchikan!

Pretty scenery at every turn.

The fam enjoying a little time on land in Ketchikan.

I was really hoping to see a bear this trip. Not up close and personal, of course, but more off in the distance so it would be undisturbed when I would inevitably jump up and down yelling “It’s a bear! Hello bear!!” Perhaps it’s a good thing we saw no bears. Actually our tour guide said that the weather was a little too nice for a lot of the bigger wildlife. Silly animals, the weather was beautiful! But we did see a lot of bald eagles. If you look at this fellow, his feathers are all ruffled in the back in an attempt to cool off. Apparently, the weather was just too nice for his taste…

We also went to the totem pole park in Ketchikan, where the natural thing to do is to try and make the same faces that the totem poles are making. Right? Doesn’t everybody else do that?

Andy and me trying to be a grimacing…beaver? Cat animal? I’m not sure at this point. But I do think we got the grimace down right.

Next stop: Juneau, Alaska’s capitol city. Interesting fact: according to our tour guide, there are currently no roads directly into Juneau. You can only get there by plane or boat. Odd for a state capitol, but maybe the Juneauites like it that way? Anywho, we did a very tame little hike to see the Mendenhall Glacier (yes, if I say a hike is tame, it’s truly very easy)

Posing with the Mendenhall glacier. The glacier itself has receded quite a bit. We know this partially because tourists have been coming here to take pictures with the glacier for ages! Back then, the ice was all the way down by the lake that’s directly behind us. You can see all the old timey photos at the visitor’s center, actually a fairly interesting stop.

Can’t get enough of posing in front of that glacier!

Oh and hey look, it’s a big waterfall! Waterfalls are spiffy.

And on to Skagway, the tiniest town on our trip. Trust me, it was so tiny that there was not even an iota of cell service on land for my fellow travelers to latch on to, making for somewhat grouchy companions to say the least. (and yes, wifi on the ship was too expensive to even consider) But we did take an interesting old train ride…

Trains!!

Pretty river scenery, but still no bears for me to get excited about.

And at the turn around point of the train ride, the Great Continental Divide! It looks a little ominous with all the fog and grey skies. Oh! And we did see a marmot, though he cleverly darted away before the hoards of tourists could get his picture. So, you’ll just have to take my word on the marmot sighting.

Us in our brightly colored puffy coat amazingness on the train crossing the Continental Divide. If either of us fell overboard, we made sure you could definitely spot us! (again, photo courtesy of Mommy Chao)

Okay friends, ready for the highlight of the trip? The majestic Sawyer glacier of the Tracy Arm Fjord. What a funny word, fjord. We said “fjord” a lot on this trip, it’s great fun to actually be able to use it in an appropriate context.

Look! It’s an iceberg in the shape of a mutated duck. Also, it was pretty cold at this point. Mittens, hats, puffy coats all came out of our suitcases as we sat on our balconies watching for the glacier. (we did upgrade to a balcony room for this cruise, and it was well worth it come glacier day) And yes, there were a lot of Titanic references made that day…

Saw a bunch of seals hanging out on the icebergs. Won’t lie, got pretty excited about that. It’s no bear, but we don’t have them at home so they’re still pretty interesting.

Momma seal and baby seal belly flopping around.

And the piece de resistance! The Sawyer Glacier. It’s hard to describe the enormity of it, but trust me when I say this thing was a most impressive block of ice! We even got to see some of the ice breaking off and falling into the ocean, glacier calving if you will. In any other situation, it’s probably a fairly worrying noise. But on our cruise ship a good distance away, it was just neat to see/hear.

And that, my friends, was our trip to Alaska in a nutshell. We had a great time and hope to go back someday to fully explore sans cruise. We have a few more pictures that I’ve posted here in the gallery if you’d like to take a look. Maybe next time I’ll see that elusive bear…

So, I’ve been stuck in a bad cycle. The more I don’t post, the more guilty I feel about not posting, and the less likely I am to ever catch up. With that said, how about I just start with the most current event and work backwards when I find time? Not ideal, because a lot has happened since January, but it’s a working plan!

Last weekend, we celebrated one of my dearest friends with a bee themed baby shower! (yes, it’s the second bee themed baby shower I’ve helped to throw, but a good idea is a good idea no matter how many times it’s done!) Ashley and Gustavo are expecting their first baby in August. So, obviously a shower befitting the awesome people that they are was well at hand! And I had the honor of throwing this shower with three of Ashley’s most awesome girls, Katie, Robyn, and Rhae. Planning a shower together and splitting the to-do list really made this one of the least stressful and most fun showers I’ve helped throw!

And instead of all my babbling, how about some pictures?

Katie made these fun invitations announcing the upcoming arrival of Baby Martín.

A clothesline of Burt’s bees organic baby onesies. So cute and so soft! Plus, the bee print on the onesies fit the theme perfectly!

Yellow and white flowers to compliment the bee theme arranged by yours truly.

A picture of the parents-to-bee in a picture frame with a little bee charm. Because I just can’t resist a good theme! 🙂

A buzzingly adorable and delicious cake from Sweet Arts Creations. Strawberry cake with a Nutella filling was definitely a good call! Thanks to Robyn for finding such a tasty cake!

And Robyn even made these cool beehive sugar cookies for party favors. Yum!

The shower was held at Milburn Country Club in Overland Park. We were really lucky that Rhae was a member and got us an incredible deal! The space was perfect, and look at this food spread! Couldn’t have asked for a better location!

Okay, now that the surroundings are set, shall we take a peek at our star and the rest of the guests?

Robyn, myself, Ashley, and Rhae together again! We were so sad that Katie could not attend, but we know she was sending us good party vibes!

And of course, presents!!

Everyone got a kick out of the onesie that Katie found!

Baby bathing implements, necessary!

There you have it, a fantastic afternoon with some wonderful people, all to celebrate Ashley and Baby Martín! You can click here to see the photos in our gallery. Feel free to right click, and download if you’d like to save a copy! (I think there’s only 2 or 3 that I haven’t posted here on the blog, I never take as many photos as I probably should…sigh.)

Several weeks ago, we got Andy’s family together for a group trip to Galveston. Why Galveston? I know, it doesn’t sound very thrilling and the beaches are rather…gray, hardly the picturesque white sand beaches people hope for. However, it was the most convenient beach destination for most everybody in the family. Plus, it’s not terribly expensive, and since we went the weekend before Memorial Day, not very crowded. Not to mention, I found an amazing house rental at VRBO.

Check out this three story, five bedroom, four bathroom house! It has a nice view of the ocean from both decks and is impeccably furnished. Would definitely stay here again!

We spent most of our time hanging out in the beach or at the house. And since the beach was within walking distance, why not take advantage of it?

Hudson with his Grandpa Trommer strolling on the beach.

The Trommer Family

Oh! And we decided to bring Jabber with us on this little beach vacay. Jabber’s turning 10 this year and we thought she might like to see the ocean! (Cery doesn’t always do so well with unfamiliar surroundings and small children, so she got an all expense paid trip to Petsmart, which she actually does love very much.)

Look at this salty sea dog! Actually, she didn’t seem to enjoy the beach very much. She tolerated the water and swimming but HATED the waves.

Baby Dayton with her Grandma Trommer, enjoying a beautiful day in Galveston. Baby’s first trip to the beach!

We also went into Galveston proper for a cute little summer fair. There was a Southern Star beer tasting, delicious pulled pork sandwiches from the Sauced Pig food truck, and a neat vintage car show.

Looks like an old timey car! Because why not?

Look, another car!

Hudson is in a phase where he LOVES cars. He desperately wanted to get into every car we saw. Thankfully, this nice lady let him get in her antique car and pretend to drive. Now that’s a happy Hudson.

And the rest of the time, we happily enjoyed the lovely air conditioning in our beautiful rental house. Here’s me and my happy niece. Seriously, she’s one happy baby. Most of the time, she’s perfectly content to just sit in the middle of the floor and play with her toes.

And because it’s a family vacation, there must be at least one attempt at a group photo. So look, it’s the family!

Another memorable family vacation in the books! You can click here to see a few of the other photos we took. But as of late, we’ve been pretty terrible at getting enough pictures. It certainly didn’t help that our camera really disliked the Galveston humidity and fogged up whenever we tried to take it outside. Thank goodness for cell phone cameras? Never thought I’d see the day where I would utter those words…